On Fri, 4 Aug 2000, McBride, Brian wrote:
> I am in the process of building an implementation of these enhancements
> which I intend to make freely available. I have got far enough with the
> design that I am reasonably confident that it is implementable. I would
> like to get early feedback before getting too far into the implementation.
> In particular I'd welcome comments on:
>
> * is the overall style appealing?
From the examples, yes; if only Java supported operator overloading and
coercion operators, eh? :-)
> * whilst maintaining the current statement centric method calls, added
> a set of resource centric method calls which are cascadable to make code
> easier to read and write
The improved readability is good; but I'm a bit unsure about this: do
resources carry with them a pointer to the model they're associated
with? (Example below)
> * explicit container support
This is a really, really good idea.
> * typed data values in literals - supports built in types and user
> defined objects
The ability to store class definitions (for example) in an RDF model is
appealing.
> * explicit support for reification (... dare I mention this :)
Again, there needs to be some support for this. Reification should be
easy to use, because it gives you a handle on doing all sorts of RDF
value-adds (storing provenance information is the example most often
touted around here)
> * a style more consistent with current java api practice
The only thing I'm really unclear on thus far is this:
Resource ora = model.createResource()
.addProperty(Dc.name, "Ora Lassila");
model2.add(ora, Dc.creator, model2.createLiteral("Mr. Lassila, Snr.");
model2.add(ora, Dc.creator, model2.createLiteral("Mrs. Lassila");
ora.addProperty(anotherProptery, anotherValue);
Which model is changed by the last call? Does ora have a default
model? Or does it carry an identity with respect to each model it comes
into contact with?
jan
--
jan grant, ILRT, University of Bristol. http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/
Tel +44(0)117 9287163 Fax +44 (0)117 9287112 RFC822 jan.grant@bris.ac.uk
Generalisation is never appropriate.